BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Scott Galloway: Stop Being an Earner, Start Being an Owner
Episode Date: October 7, 2026Get a good corporate job, save some money, and start investing ASAP. If you’re going to buy a house, do it here. That’s Scott Galloway’s advice, or, as you may know him, Prof. G. Entrepreneur, N...YU Stern School of Business professor, and author of The Algebra of Wealth. Scott has gotten wealthy three times because, per his own words, he’s gone broke twice. After launching numerous companies, working as an investment banker, and becoming a bestselling author, he’s earned the right to share his contrarian takes on what’s about to happen next, and how you can get wealthy even if it feels like the world is looking less optimistic by the day. We cover everything: the chances of an economic crash, whether buying a house is worth it (and where), whether AI will actually pay off, and the wealth-building opportunity of a generation almost no one is paying attention to. Also, a rare take on why side hustling could be killing your ability to earn more income, instead of increasing it. Even if you’ve got no assets to your name right now, Scott makes a strong case for how (and why) you should become an owner, not an earner, ASAP. In This Episode We Cover How to go from “earner” to “owner” and get on the wealth-building side of the economy The five real estate markets Scott would be (and is) betting money on A wealth-building opportunity that could make younger generations set for life STOP doing side hustles? Where your extra effort should really be going The wealth formula that’s so simple most will ignore it (and makes you happier) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1340. Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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If you don't own assets, you're about to be in for a rude awakening.
That's Scott Galloway's warning.
You may know him as Prof.G.
He's an entrepreneur, NYU Stern School of Business Professor, and author of the Algebra of
Wealth.
Scott has gotten wealthy three different times, because, per his own words, he's gone broke
twice.
He tried to time the market.
He launched numerous companies, and he still made it out alive.
Scott says today's economy is different.
It's, quote, prosperous but fragile.
If you've got assets, it's good.
But if you don't, it's a real struggle.
So how do you move from being on the earner side of the table to the owner side?
So you can build wealth and not get stuck in the rat race.
We're going to talk about everything today, the chance of an economic crash, whether AI will pay off, should you buy a house right now?
And if so, where?
And why getting a corporate job may get you to financial freedom faster, contrary to what 99% of people
are saying. Hey everyone, I'm Dave Meyer. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Today, we have a very special
show for you. Our guest today is Scott Galloway, also known as Prof. G. Scott Galloway is a successful
entrepreneur. He is one of the foremost economic thought leaders in our space right now, and a
prolific author, and he's the kind of guy who's just going to tell you exactly what he thinks. He
does not pull punches. And today, I've got a lot of questions for him about the economy in general,
about housing, and how to get ahead in this confusing economy. Let's bring on Scott Galloway.
Scott, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. So good to have you here again. Thanks for being here.
It's great to be with you, Dave. It's been three years since you've been on the show. And, of course,
a whole lot has happened geopolitically and economically. And I'd like to just start at the top. How would
you describe the moment we're in right now in the American economy? I guess K-shaped and it feels
like prosperous but fragile. You know, I was I was walking through New York the other day and
New York 65 million visitors last year, 85 billion in economic activity, 400,000 jobs,
Broadway attendance is greater now than all the attendance to all the sports teams regionally,
job growth of 1.1 million, but the asterisk is inflation is at 4.6.
versus 3.4 nationally. So if you're in the right place and the right time in New York,
it's never been better. Bankers' compensation is up 38%. But if you're the kind of person who has
to show up for jury duty, you probably have inflation and your rent is just getting more expensive.
And of those one million jobs created, most of them were in health care. Most of those people
are taking care of old people. And I think that's a larger metaphor for the United States.
And that is if you're in the right place, if you have the right credentials, the right skills,
it's just never been better.
One of the reasons the middle class has an increase
and some people would argue is decrease
and we don't like to talk about this
because catastrophizing is a better narrative
is that a lot of the middle class
has been elevated in a millionaire status.
There are a lot of people making a lot of money.
GDP growth in the U.S. is actually pretty strong.
Unemployment isn't that bad.
Now, go to the fragility part,
whether or not living on borrowed money
from future generations,
spending $7 trillion and $5 trillion in tax receipts,
that feels like a recipe for disaster.
And I would argue some of the damage we're doing geopolitically
will take generations, if ever, to repair
and that our economic relationships and alliances
aren't even being frayed.
There's like enormous fissures.
So, K-shaped, if things are good for you,
they're probably great for you,
better than they've ever been.
A lot of people just struggling, I think,
to maintain wage growth.
with inflation and what I would call a series of macro or structural decisions that will that will
haunt us.
I worry about many of the same things and do personally identify with the feeling of fragility.
It does feel even for those of us who are fortunate to remain employed, to have assets,
to be doing relatively well in this economy, it just feels like something is about to break.
Yeah.
Do you get that sense?
If we woke up tomorrow, Dave, and the S&P was off 20% in one day and it was off 40% a year, we'd go, well, of course it is.
Exactly.
We have 10 companies, 40% of the S&P, those companies are based on, are basically priced to perfection.
And if you look at the CAPEX of AI right now, which is driving, I think, 90% of GDP growth, 73% of earnings growth, the underlying assumption to justify the spend and the stock prices,
is that the AI sector is going to be a $2.5 trillion sector, which is bigger than all of tech
right now. Right now it's at about $150 or $200 billion in revenues. We think it's going to $12x.
And if it doesn't, say it ends up only being a trillion dollar category AI, if these 10
companies sneeze the U.S. market and ultimately the global markets of which
the Dow and S&P now represents 50% of global equity value, 70% if you add in debt, the whole world
is going to catch walking pneumonia. Now, that may not be the worst thing. I almost feel like
a managed correction, although there's no such thing, a correction as opposed to a crash,
might be a good thing because the problem is guys like me and you who own assets,
it's been champagne and cocaine. If you own stocks and houses, you're fine. You're doing great.
You're hedged against inflation.
You've seen extraordinary gains.
The problem is the entrance, the closest they've gotten to the party is they get to throw their credit card in and we swipe it.
You know, if America was a household, it makes $50,000 a year tax receipts.
It spends $70,000 government spending.
It has $390,000 in debt.
And that debt is not dischargeable when the parents died.
The kids are going to get it.
So I like what Jamie Diamond said.
When asked what a recession is, he said something that happens every seven years.
we really haven't had a full-blown recession in arguably kind of 17 years. So the question is,
is it a recession or a crash? And if you're a permabair like me, I keep waiting for it to happen.
And the reality is, I've been wrong. And something I always try to ask myself is what could go
right? Because the economy so far has been extraordinarily resilient and continues to grind on.
But I would argue that the soft tissue and the fragility is that it feels as if the West,
the U.S., and accidentally the global economy has become a giant bet on AI.
It just seems like it's rampant speculation without any fundamentals.
And I don't want to say that AI is not an incredible technology.
It is.
Like if anyone has used it, you can tell that it is going to be transformative.
I used to be, Scott, before I was doing this show, a data analyst.
That job is not going to exist for entry-level people anymore.
But the idea that the bets that these companies are making and the very unclear motives about
what the executives that these companies are doing makes it feel like everyday people are absorbing
risk into their retirement savings and into their portfolio that they might not even necessarily
know that they are signing up for.
And it really, for me, calls into question, what do normal people do?
Even though we don't know if there's going to be a crash or a collapse, I think it's fair to say that risks are rising.
And so in an environment of rising risk, what do you do?
So the first thing is, when Trump is, I'm not a fan of Trump.
When Trump was elected in 2016 and 2016, I thought, this guy is not bright.
It's going to be terrible for the markets.
And I sold most of my equities.
So they had run up a lot because I bought a lot of Amazon, Apple and Netflix and 08 and 09 and had done really well on those.
so I lost whatever it was living in New York,
34% of that in taxes.
And then six months later, I recognize
that the economy in the market is bigger
than any one person, even the president.
And the market surged, and I bob back in.
I basically reduced my net worth by 20 or 30%
by having an emotional reaction to the markets.
And the advice I have to anyone is,
yeah, the market is expensive.
Yeah, it's fragile.
You always wanna be in the market.
Because no one has the ability to time it.
And if you go back,
in history to the bigger tech crash 2000, the economist called it perfectly. It described exactly
how it was going to play out. And it called it perfectly. But it called it in 1997. And over the
next two years, the NASDAQ doubled. So about the time guys like me say, watch out for a crash,
oftentimes the market scorches up. It goes from crazy valuations to insane valuations.
So generally speaking, to believe you can time the market is a hallucination. So you always want to be in the
market. Now, what I would argue, and this is, you know, what I'm doing is to be in the S&P
is not diversification. What I argue is that your Kevlar against this type of risk is diversification.
I never really appreciated the power of diversification. I've been wealthy three times because
I've gone broke twice. And I was fortunate enough to get it back. But I'm not going back there.
I don't have the youth, the mental strength to start over again. So what I did is.
is I don't put any more than three or four percent of my net worth in any one thing.
And my advice is if you're like me and maybe maybe a little bit older and think, okay,
I'd like to get rich, but what I really don't want is to get poor.
Really think about diversification, not only across stocks, but across asset classes and
across geographies.
Having said that, I'm kind of with Buffett.
I think cash is trash.
I think you may want to look at debt because people are finally getting paid for debt right now.
for the most part, I believe you always want to be in the market.
We've got to take a quick break, everyone, but we're going to be right back with Scott Galloway
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slash bigger pockets. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm here with Scott Galloway.
Let's jump back in. Does your definition of diversification, Scott, contain any real estate?
You're pressing on my soft tissue.
So my advice to everyone is basically around investing
is low-cost index funds.
I mean, don't kid yourself.
You think you're smarter than the market, you're not.
And if you think you're smarter than the market
and start investing in individual stocks or hedging,
just keep in mind you're competing with the person
on the other side of the trade.
Is a PhD in Liquid Dynamics from MIT who got hired by a hedge fund
and has supercomputers and AI helping them?
That's who you're competing with.
So low-cost index funds, having said that,
I like so many people think I'm smarter than your average bear, and I make individual bets.
Me too.
I just can't help it.
I just can't help it.
I think, oh, I'm on to something.
And I do get some psychic reward from it.
And then I think about my winners and I talk about them.
And then when I go back and look at everything, I'm like, okay, I performed two percentage
below the S&P, if I'm honest.
But I'm a big believer in demographics.
And one of my economic role models is Peter Drucker.
And the demographic shift that I see, and that I'm investing behind is the following.
I think income inequality is only going to get worse.
And that the fastest growing cohort in the world isn't going to be Latinos or Southeast Asians
or old people.
The fastest growing cohort is going to be people worth over $10 million.
The number of billionaires is, I think, quintupled in the last 10 years, the number of
centip millionaires, I think it's up two or three X.
And it's like, okay, what do they buy?
They buy Hermes. They go to St. Bartz. They're actually fairly boring people. They kind of do the same thing. And very wealthy people want to own homes in one of five places or a second home. Dubai, London, Palm Beach, New York, and Aspen. And so my kind of alpha, if you will, is I have spent a disproportionate amount of my net worth on homes in four of those five cities, thinking that one, I like to have
picks them up, I get psychic income from that. Two, I get an additional kicker, and that is I'm trying
to make it hard for my boys to avoid me. Like when they say to their friends, we can go to Maslan
surf or we can go to Aspen, we have to have lunch with my dad, but it's free. And then I think in
five to seven years, I'm going to sell summer all of these places. But what I see is very,
very wealthy people are the most homogenous people in the world. They look, dress, smell, feel the same,
and they all want to live in the same places. And I believe they're
all aggregating around a handful of places. And so I have put a lot of money into residential
real estate. If I had it to do over again, like everyone, I would just buy single family
rentals. I think real estate, just because of its tax advantages, is just a great way. As long as
you don't over lever yourself, you look at it and think, okay, let's assume the market goes down 20, 30, 40%,
with the bank on it. So rental real estate, I think it is hard to find a category that on a risk
adjusted basis is a better way to get rich slowly. Exactly. That's what we say on the show. It's
not get rich quick, but it's get rich for sure over the long term if you just keep making those
bets. Which of those five cities are you missing? I don't own a home in Dubai. And by the way,
I've owned these homes for anywhere between four and ten years. And the two markets that have
performed the worst, oh, you're a smart guy. So I'm in London, New York, Palm Beach, and Aspen.
rank those in terms of returns
of the last 10 years.
I would say, I would put Palm Beach at 1.
Ding, ding, ding, hands down.
Okay, yeah.
I own real estate there.
In the last 10 years, it's tripled.
The amount of capital just going into that area
of the country has just been absolutely insane.
Yeah.
All right.
Two, I don't know much about the London market,
but I would go with Aspen second.
You're very good at this.
It is my job.
Aspen is number two.
I've only owned real estate here for about three years, but I would bet it's up 50% in the last three years.
Well, your thesis is spot on that.
There's normal people in New York and London, but there's no normal people in Aspen.
Well, and then tied for last place, New York and London.
And if you had asked me 10 years ago, here these four regions, you're going to invest in all of them.
and I want to diversify because I think I know what I don't know. And I'm like, nobody knows. But if someone
had forced me to speculate, I hands down would have said London or New York that those cities
never go out of style. And I don't think my London property has kept pace with inflation.
And I think my New York property, which I've owned for 10 years, has barely kept pace with
inflation. It's been an up and down ride there. Yeah. This is just all a long-winded way of saying,
Nobody knows.
And so you don't need to find the needle in the haystack, buy the whole haystack.
And so that's what I've done.
I've concentrated in real estate, but I'm trying to diversify.
I do believe that cities, two-thirds of economic growth over the next 20 years is going to happen in 20 super cities.
I do think that cities are a marvel of humanity around cooperation and bumping off one another.
so I don't, you know, I invest in urban areas, so to speak. But yeah, nobody knows. I would have
gotten this wrong. If they said go all in on one place, I would have picked London or New York, and I would have been wrong.
Yeah, that's a good point on diversification, especially when you're doing it from your perspective, which is you have a lot of capital. You're not operating these properties daily as rental properties.
You don't need to be there as frequently as, you know, people in our audience might who are sort of investing all into their business. But I do love the idea of diversification.
I talk about that a lot on the show, just diversification geographically, but also even within strategies in real estate, you know, people who do flipping that's a risky business trying to balance that out with rental properties or multifamily or industrial and that kind of stuff. So I think it's the only responsible advice with the level of uncertainty we have in geopolitics and in our economy, diversification is the only honest answer is that no one really knows. And the best play is to, you know, spread out your capital.
And we've talked a lot, Scott, about capital, but I'm curious your thoughts on how people
should invest their time, because it does feel, to your point about a case-shaped economy,
that you need to do more than just have a W-2 job.
Like, perhaps you're one of these mega-earners, but the majority of us are not.
And so is it required now for people to have a side hustle or to do something on the side?
Like, is this idea that you can sort of just work a job and become prosperous, even if you
do all of the investing, follow all of the investing advice,
that you gave or even if you're the best investor in the world, is that enough anymore?
In general, I think I'm less fond of the side hustle culture than most people. And that is,
I get it. If you're at a job and you're younger and you can't afford to leave because of your
health insurance and you want to investigate other things, so you start on evenings and weekends,
the side hustle to learn about it, to see if you can make money at it and maybe double down on
it at some point, I get it. If it's a chance to test stuff, I get it. But what generally
generally I find is that if you constantly have side hustles, it means your main hustle isn't working.
And that the majority of very successful people have a monocular focus on one hustle.
And that is they find a place, they find a seat somewhere where they have senior level
sponsorship, the company's growing, they're good at it, and they kind of go all in.
And I would argue, you know, success isn't the last 10%.
If you're at a good company that offers stock options, it's easy to romanticize entrepreneurship.
The greatest wealth creator in history is the U.S. corporation.
99.99% of people don't have an opportunity to go to work for J.P. Morgan and Google.
When people go to my office hours at school, they don't want to talk about my strategy course.
They want career advice.
And it usually goes something like this.
I have offers from J.P. Morgan and Google.
The kids coming at NYU are blessed.
They are still huge demand for them.
AI or not, they still have a lot of professional.
I'm not for the JP Morgan and Google, but I'm thinking about starting my own business. I really
want to do my thing. And I say the following. Don't be fucking stupid. Go to work for Google.
If you have access. It's hard to bet against them. Yeah. If you have access to these platforms,
they have thousands of people doing nothing but trying to attract and retain the best human capital.
And one of the ways they do that is with benefits, with strong cultures, treating you well. If you have a baby, they give you four to six months off,
giving you options, making it so hard.
They know how much drudgery and bullshit is involved in any corporation.
They know it.
So they figure out a way to make it worth it.
I started Morgan Stanley right out at college, and I was there two years.
I did not have the skills to navigate a large corporation or be successful there.
Not because I was such a baller and needed to do my own thing.
I didn't have the skills to be successful in Morgan Stanley.
Being skilled, patient, mature, politically savvy at a large corporation,
is an unbelievable underrated skill. I did not have those skills. I went started to small
business. I've been starting businesses ever since then. My boss, who is only two years older than me,
he's been at Morgan Stanley the entire time. I have endured way more stress and ups and downs than
him. And we both have approximately the same net worth. And most people would look at my career and go,
this guy's in the top, whatever, 1% of entrepreneurs and has had some hits. And I have. But the
amount of stress, ups and downs, versus he's just plotted along every year, associate, vice president,
MD, partner, head of a region, chair, vice chair. And every year, he's just clocked a lot of money
with a lot. So my point is, I don't like side hustles. If it's a means of testing something,
then test it. But the way you usually get wealthy is going all in on one thing. That makes sense.
I do actually like that approach.
It's kind of like the burn the boats approach
where it's like if you're just kind of always tinkering and dabbling
in a couple things, you never get good at anything.
But it seems to me, if you're going into the corporate world
or any W-2 job, like if you're going to do it,
you have to get really good at it.
Because there's this stat that I keep seeing
that kind of haunts my dreams, that the percentage of earnings
that goes to labor now, even in corporations,
it's like an all-time level.
All the money is going to sort of the top,
the shareholders, the CEO.
as the executives or, you know, dividends and buybacks. And so it feels like you need to either go all
in on rising to the top and dedicating yourself or do you think for some people, it's just better
to say, like, listen, I don't have that in me. Like, I should go start a business or I should
do something different because it feels like the low to middle part of a corporation is a bit of a
trap these days. It's so situational. And that's why the only blanket advice I would give is form a
kitchen cabinet of people who smart that you trust that understand the ecosystem you're operating
in are not afraid to tell you when you're making bad decisions. That's the most important asset.
Because if you go to work for just Stalantis right now, you go to work for an automobile company
and you think, okay, let's be honest, the Chinese are going to just eat our lunch the next 10 years.
I don't have what I'll call senior level sponsorship. One of the keys to being successful at any
organization, especially a big company, is having someone senior to you that is emotionally
invested in your success. And then are you really successful? That's probably not a great place to be.
To be at Anthropic right now, I don't care if you're taking out the trash. I don't care if you're in
the kitchen. Stay there and write that whole anthropic thing out, just to see what takes you.
Because they have 5,000 employees on a company that supposedly is going to go public at $2 trillion.
So it depends where you are. It depends where you are in life. If you have a spouse that doesn't work,
and you're planning to have kids. I had someone who essentially built my last room L2.
Three women all went to Nike a big client. Nike's stock is off 70% since they went there.
For a couple of the younger ones who were probably looking to really accelerate their careers,
it was probably not a great move. For one of them, she had two kids in three years.
They have unbelievable maternity benefits. She likes to run. So being in Portland, Oregon,
getting in good shape, getting 10 or 12 months over three years to be at home with your kids.
Even with the stock down, that's not a bad rap.
You don't get that with entrepreneurship.
You definitely don't get that time off for the benefits.
And also, you need honest self-awareness, and that is people talk about entrepreneurship
like vision and talent.
No, the only talent really is an entrepreneur is your willingness to get out a big spoon in each shit.
Entrepreneurship is Latin for salesperson.
Some days, you know, some of the metrics come back and it's awful and you don't make enough money that month and you've got to say to your partner, I realize I've been working my ass off and the reward for this is that we get to take our hard-earned savings and put it back into the company. I mean, you have to have an extraordinary appetite and stomach for risk. And two, you have to be willing to sell. And most people are not willing to sell because this is what selling is. Hi, I want to come talk to you about my new cell. Fuck off. Do not call me again.
And then your follow-up has to be, so I think you're saying I should call you back in a couple months.
That's what it means to be an entrepreneur.
You're selling employees.
You're selling customers.
You're selling capital.
Most people are not willing to sell.
The sweet spot, I think, if you look at where the sweet spot is in terms of risk to return, the sweet spot is in a company that's like, call it 30 or 50 to 500 employees that already has proof of concept.
They built something and it's selling.
Maybe they got their A round done and they're talking about getting their B round done.
The founders are super smart and I can come in and get a half a point or 1% of this company.
Because the infant mortality rate among businesses, being employees zero and one to 10.
Big graveyard, yeah.
So it's just a level of self-awareness around your situation.
Sometimes when they come to me and say they want to start a business and it's crazy,
and I'll say to them, are you rich?
It's a different equation if you're rich.
If you have rich parents, it's a different calculus. Because if you start a business and you're trying to start a family and you guys don't have a safety net or a backstop or a lot of money saved, that can get very stressful, very hast. The long-winded way of saying, I think it's situational and you need outsiders. Very hard to read the label from inside of the bottle. I would also argue great time to start a business is when you have nothing to lose. If you can do it on scrappiness and really don't have a family, you don't have people that you
need to support and you can easily support yourself. Also, a decent time to give something a shot
when your time is worth nothing. Basically, you couldn't be earning more else. You know,
people who are 22 years old, interesting time. We got more to talk about with Scott Galloway
right after this quick break. Stick with us. You know, when I first started sharing my real estate
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Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast.
Let's jump back in with.
Scott Galloway. You've said you think rental property investing is good, side hustle is not so good,
and entrepreneurship, you know, mixed feelings and situational. How would you evaluate what our audience does,
which is majority of people working W-2 investing in rental properties on the side? Is that investing?
Is that entrepreneurship? Or like, where does that rank for you? I wrote a book called The Algebra
Wealth. And it's fairly straightforward, but it's hard. But I know how, the good news is I know how to get
I know how to get you rich, but the answer is similar to what you said.
The answer is slowly.
It's pretty basic.
There's a formula.
You got to find something you're good at.
And the way you become good at something is through focus.
Your job in your 20s is to workshop a series of careers, if one doesn't work, until you find
something where you think, in five years I could be in the top 10 percent of this industry
in terms of professionals, and in 10 years I could be in the top 1 percent.
and in an industry that has a 90 plus percent employment rate.
You want to go to acting, you want to go to modeling, you want to be in sports, you want to be in restaurants, you want to be in nightclubs.
Okay, if you're not in the top 1%, you can't make a living.
A boring industry, and you think I could be great at this, double down focus.
I'm going to go all in.
I've never known anyone with a lot of influence and a lot of money who wasn't born rich.
They didn't go pretty much all in and work pretty hard for a good 20 years.
That's just part of it.
And by the way, you may decide you don't want to do that, that you want to work to live, not live to work,
move to a lower cost, region, your husband's a nurse, you coach Little League, you go to church,
more power to you, you're happy. If you're an economic animal as I was when you were young,
you've got to focus and find something you think you could be in the top 10, if not the top 1%.
The next thing I say is stoicism, and what I really mean is discipline, and that is
find things that give you happiness that don't involve every capitalist incentive to buy more
shit. Working out, spirituality, meditation practice, time with friends, volunteer work,
but have the discipline from a young age to save every month a little bit of money and put it in low-cost index funds.
And it's so boring, but it's so powerful.
I didn't do this.
I always thought, I'm a baller.
I'm going to start and sell a company for millions.
That's stupid putting $2,000 in an IRA or a Roth or whatever.
Be smarter than I was.
Spend less than you make and always save a little bit of money.
Then the next thing is let time take over.
One of our flaws is a species is because very few of us live past 35, our brain still can't
comprehend we're going to be here until we're 100 years old, and the time will go faster than
you think, and then if you just have the discipline to put a little bit of money away
every month, assume you don't go double platinum, you're not on the bestseller list,
Manchester United doesn't draft you for whatever reason, you're going to be fine when you're
my age.
And then the last thing is what we talked about, the importance of diversification.
moment you have anything resembling an asset base, try to diversify. And it's very hard for young
people. Sometimes you have to go all in and stretch to buy a home, which represents, you know,
140% of your net worth. When you start a business, you kind of have no choice but to go all in.
But the moment you have some asset base and the opportunity to get some liquidity, you immediately
want to start diversifying. I like that. Makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, though, you mentioned
buying a home, what role do you believe home ownership plays in the current, either American
Dream, if you want to call it, or just the path to financial success?
Again, it's situational. You need to listen to a podcast like this and just do the basic math.
If you're living in, I don't know, El Paso, that you look at the ratio of what the annual
rent is relative to the price, the yield. And if it's above- Go buy a house. Above a certain amount,
you buy a house. It's just a smart thing to do. It's very tax advantage. If you live in New York or San
Francisco and you're not rich or you're not about to get a windfall from anthropropic, I would argue,
rent and take the money you save on property taxes, maintenance, mortgage, everything, and try and
invest it and try and have that discipline. So it's just situational. Now, there is a psychic
return to it, and that is one of the really unfortunate things about our society is, I mean,
you talked about, as a percentage of GDP, corporate profits have never been higher, wages have
never been lower. The three players or constituents in our economy are the owners of
shareholders, the workers, and the consumer. Through regulatory capture and citizens united,
letting money play a role in politics and policy, over the last 40 years, there's been just an
enormous leakage seeding of power capital influence from consumers and workers to the owners.
Yes. So what do you want to do as fast as possible, and it's not easy, is have the discipline
to move away from being the worst spot, the earner, to an owner.
I mean, and this is hard.
Try and put away a little bit of money and then go buy a rental unit,
and now you're an owner.
And that house, if you're working during the day,
I did this, me and my wife by our first rental home,
she was working at Arthur Anderson.
I had a startup.
But every year, say you make $100,000 as an earner,
you lose 20 to 30% of it.
If you have $100,000 in equity in a home and it increases in value, you don't pay taxes on it.
It's tax deferred.
And if you sell it for less than half a million dollars, it's tax-free.
And if you own a stock, it's tax deferred.
There's this myth that the rich don't pay taxes.
The rich pay a lot of taxes.
It's the rich earners that pay all the taxes.
That stat that says, oh, the top 1% of taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes, that's true.
misleading because the richest Americans don't pay taxes because they don't have taxable events.
They don't sell stocks. They don't sell their homes. They take a very small salary and they let their
assets compound. So you want to get as fast as you can be focused, be an earner, save some money,
and just bust a move and it's hard and requires discipline and don't order that coffee
and don't go to St. Bart's, as fast as you can, get from being an earner to an owner.
American tax policy has been taking money out of the pockets of earners and putting it
into the pockets of owners for 40 years. And being an owner can just be buying one share of
Netflix, which is off 40% this year, right? Whatever it is. There's different ways to be an owner,
but that is how you get rich is by being an owner. Now, if you're CEO of Goldman Sachs,
fine, you make 17 million bucks, you pay 50% of taxes, you're still doing just fine. Very few of us
are going to be those high income earners. I'd be happy to write that check. Yeah, fine. Ownership.
Just figure out a way, even if it's buying one share at a time to move from being an earner to an owner.
I think it's one of the biggest realizations I had, like whether you like it or not, not saying it's right, but that just is.
It is how the tax system is set up. It allows owners to compound their wealth, either through lower tax.
rates for capital gains or like you said deferrals on taxes, whereas there's no cheat in your
income tax. You know, you're going to pay that. So the faster you get to ownership, the faster
you get to be a part of this rising tide, or at least the way that the American economy has
trended over the last generation or two. But Scott, before we get out of here, I have one more
question. You piqued my interest before. You said you thought that some of the things that
we're doing right now might take generations to resolve.
and as someone who just had a child.
I'm very curious.
What do you think the big challenge is,
and maybe if you see opportunity as well,
coming for American society
and the American economy in the coming generation?
Well, look, I'm a glass-half-empty kind of guy.
I struggle with anger and depression.
I have a tough time being optimistic about stuff.
I find there's a lot of really good reasons
to not be optimistic right now.
I think our geopolitical policy is just,
planning economic IEDs everywhere. People take our largest trading partner as China or the EU. It's not. It's
Canada. Canada. Yeah. We sell about $900 billion of goods into Canada who could not have been
a better neighbor, a better friend, a better ally. Largest undefended border in the world.
And they trusted us. They invested in this partnership. 70% of their exports come to America.
And what did we do? We turned around and said, I know for no real reason. We're going to declare
economic war on you. I think we're in the midst of superpower suicide. Post-World War II,
80 years of prosperity through cooperation by rebuilding Japan and Germany and largely being seen,
and a lot of people push back on this, largely being seen as the good guys, enforcing freedom
of navigation with our Navy, settling in U.S. dollars, rule of law, largely based on U.S. contract
law. We were the operating system for 60 or 70 percent of the world's GDP. We have been so hostile,
so sclerotic, so undependable with other democracies and capitalist societies, we are now going
from a bipolar world where it was 70-30, us versus, call it China, Russia, Iran, whatever,
to 30-40-30. And that is everyone from Brazil and South Korea to the EU are going to form their
own relationships around us. And even if America returns to some level of economic sanity,
I don't think they're coming back. Is they going to say, well, what happens when the next populist
person props up and decides to change tariffs against us 17 times, which is what we've done with
China. So I am very skeptical of U.S. markets for a while. The counter to that is that with all
these problems, the biggest wealth creation vehicle in history, AI, at least from an equity
standpoint, it's not only all happening in America, it's happening within a seven-mile radius
of SFO International Airport. So there's something about American ingenuity and
risk-taking in capital formation that is still unparalleled. That's the bull market. But the opportunity,
I think, if I was advising a young person, again, it's situational. If you're young and you can get a
college certification and get to a great platform, do it, get learning, get skills, get contacts.
And then if you want to start a business, fine. But I still think the American corporation and
certification, I'm a big fan of higher education. I think all the people shit posting higher education.
That means their kid just blew the ACT or, you know, it's so important.
vogue now to say you're not going to need higher ed.
Higher ed has never been more important.
Anyway, I'm a big fan of higher ed, but I think an opportunity for a lot of young people
right now is I think you're about to see the largest disposal or fire sale of small businesses
by baby boomers whose kids do not want to hang drapes.
I had this guy in my house, my house in Florida.
He's a drapery guy.
And he hangs these beautiful, gorgeous drapes and window-carry.
and he comes in and he steams them.
You know, he charges a lot of money.
And I asked him, you know, what do you make?
And he was very open with me.
He's like, we do about a million and a half year in business and we clear about six or
800 grand.
And I'm the owner.
Wow.
50% margins.
Yeah, great margins, right?
That's unreal.
And I have five or six good people working for me who make good livings.
Two kids, neither have any interest in the business because he was able to send them to
elite schools like the University of Florida and SMU.
and now those kids don't want to be in the curtain-hanging business.
This is a guy in his early 60s, he might just close the business down.
So I think there's a lot of opportunity in these kind of small niche businesses for a talented,
pretty young person to go, to find these people and say, I don't have any money,
but I'm going to work with you two years.
I'm really good.
You're going to say how hardworking I am and how responsible I am.
And then you're going to sell me the business slowly.
Like a seller finance deal, yeah.
100%.
And for the rest of your life, I'm going to give you 5% royalty on everything.
I buy it.
I've been underwriting those businesses myself. I'm just super interested in it. And personally,
I think we'll probably hit a recession in the next year or so. I can't predict it. But I think
that's going to be the impetus. I think a lot of these older operators, they don't want to go through
another cycle. They're done. And so they're going to start selling them at a faster clip at a time
when there's not going to be many buyers. And so the buyers out there are going to have a lot of leverage.
It does seem like a really good opportunity. Well, Scott, thank you so much for being here.
This was a lot of fun. We really appreciate your time. Where should people follow you if they want to
keep track of your work? Oh, God, Dave. I'm everywhere. I'm like AOL in the 90s. If you stick my hand
in a cereal box, you're going to pull out some of it. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, Prof G.
on or Prof Galloway on all the social media platforms. My most recent book is notes on being a man.
I have several podcasts, Prop G pod, Raging Moderates, Pivot, Prop G market. So, yeah, I think, I think the
bigger challenges to avoid me right now. So anyways. All right. Well, if you want to give
advice about where to not find you, we can also allow you to do that as well. Well, thanks again,
Scott. And hopefully we'll have you on again sometime soon. I hope so, Deb. Congrats on your
success. Thank you. And thank you all for listening to this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast.
We'll see you all next time.